Celtic v Hibs Preview – Provisional Starting Eleven as Celtic expect ‘a difficult game’

CELTIC take on Hibs tonight looking to maintain or even extend their lead at the top of the Scottish Premiership.

Speaking earlier in the week, Assistant manager Chris Davies reckoned the despite having a 4-4-2 team of injured players unavailable, Celtic still have the quality and strength in depth to avoid a mishap. There certainly won’t be any excuses if things don’t go according to plan.

Chris Davies, just behind Brendan Rodgers as the Celtic team bus arrives at McDiarmid Park on Sunday

“Injuries are a part of football and we do have a strength in depth in this squad,” Davies said at the club’s Pre-match Media Conference held on Monday afternoon at Lennoxtown.

“It’s very important to have that, and at Celtic we do have that – we’ve got a lot of players still, and good players at that.”

Celtic are still going to have a strong side this evening and as we suggested on Monday, given the better news on Dedryck Boyata that Brendan provided at Perth on Sunday after the 2-0 win over St Johnstone, the team should look something like this:

Celtic v Hibs – Provisional Line-up:

Scott Bain

Jerry Toljan, Jozo Simunovic, Dedryck Boyata, Emilio Izaguirre

Scott Brown, Callum McGregor

Timo Weah, Ryan Christie, Scotty Sinclair

Oli Burke

There was some good news re the scan that James Forrest had after feeling a tightness in his hamstring at Perth, just after scoring that crucial opening goal. It seems that it’ not too serious and he actually has a chance of being available for the Valencia match in the Europa League next Thursday night – 14 February.

Butt for now the focus is on the Hibs game and Davies acknowledges that with or without Neil Lennon, there will be a significant challenge from the Easter Road side, who always seem to rise to the occasion against Celtic.

“Hibs have always been a difficult game for us, home and away,” Davies admitted.

“They play with speed and intensity and they’ve got a lot of good players. For me, it’s always a difficult game. As always, though, we have to just focus on ourselves, on our game and on our performance.

“We’ll want to bring our intensity and bring our quality to the game, and hopefully we can get a win.

“On the back of the last couple of weeks Hibs have had, I certainly wouldn’t underestimate them, and that’s certainly not something we’ll be doing.”

The game kicks off at 7.45pm and we’ll provide a Minute by Minute summary of the action on The Celtic Star which will be written up on the supporters bus sitting behind the Jock Stein stand for an hour after the final whistle!

If you’re going along tonight – enjoy the match!

COYBIG.

Also on The Celtic Star today…